Catholics should stop saying “It’s like living in Nazi Germany” when taking about ideological dangers that threaten our civilization, the provost of the Brompton Oratory has said. Writing on the Oratory’s website Fr Julian Large described the killing of hundreds of handicapped patients from Ursberg in Bavaria in 1941 as “a terrible crime that cried to Heaven for vengeance”. Today some call for the “active euthanasia” of disabled children, he wrote, “and the British press occasionally reports unsettling allegations of the illegal ‘mercy-killing’ of sick children in hospitals in Britain”. But when we encounter such ideas “we should avoid making statements such as ‘It’s like living in Nazi Germany’,” he wrote. The difference is that we are free to speak out. “As Catholics we should value this hard-won liberty, and use it to engage with public life. Young Catholics should consider involving themselves in politics, in order to keep the Christian voice alive in Parliament. The rest of us can at least support pro-Life groups, which keep us informed and alert us when we should write to our MPs.” He continued: “Under National Socialism, any German who made a fuss about the inviolability of every innocent human life from conception to death, regardless of race or any other consideration, could expect a knock on the door from the Gestapo. In the Soviet Union, such views could earn a one-way ticket into a mental asylum. In England in 2015 we are free to proclaim the sanctity of human life as much as we like.”